Economics Without Frontiers

We do not know that yet…the announcement will be made Monday, October 15th, 1:00PM CET. BUT, at Thomson Scientific, they believe they can make some predictions. Thomson Scientific’s predictions for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics are:

A description of the selection process can be seen here and an explanation of how the Citation Laureates are chosen can be found here.

Thomson Scientific even conducts a poll and it seems that froggie, …oops, I mean Jean Tirole is ahead in the poll.

Here are who I would like to win the Nobel Prize in Economics without any particular order (and do not tell me they won’t get it because they are too young, too old, not nice enough, lack diplomacy, too uncompromising, or whatever…I DO NOT CARE…THEY SHOULD GET IT period!):

Gordon Tullock "for his innumerable contributions to Law & Economics, Public Choice (yes, you are not mistaken, I did write that G.T. should get the NP for his contributions to Public Choice…and not a certain J.B. who got it in 1986), and the Political Economy of Rent-Seeking, concept that he first articulated in his 1967 article entitled: "The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies and Theft" (Western Economic Journal, Vol. 5. No. 3. P. 224-232)." What about Anne Krueger? What about her? She should not get the prize for coining the term "Rent-Seeking." Why? Because who cares she coined the term! And, she never mentions Gordon Tullock in her 1974 article "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society" (American Economic Review, Vol 64, No. 3, pp. 291-303). No further comment.

Israel Kirzner "for his contributions to economics of entrepreneurship."

Last week, my friend, economist Benjamin Powell, was in Denver to talk about what will be the hot topic of the 2008 elections: Is immigration a good or bad thing for the U.S. and what should we do about it? The high-point of his visit was the debate with former Governor Richard D. Lamm. The debate that took place on the Auraria campus was broadcasted on internet. It will also be downloadable on the MSCD’s website and on iTunes(c) and a Spanish transcript will be available as well. Ben who has discussed this issue several times prior to his visit to Denver received some press notably in the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, and ColoradoBiz Magazine following this event.

Allow me to give some personal thoughts on the debate.

After all the economic arguments and facts Ben Powell gave to Richard Lamm to explain why immigration is a good thing for the United States, the best thing Richard Lamm came up with to counter Powell’s arguments was immigration is bad for the environment!!!! According to Lamm, allowing more immigrants into the country will aggravate the overpopulation problem the U.S. seems to be suffering right now. We will end up using up the nation’s natural resources and will aggravate the global warming problem, ice will be melting, and this will be the end of all humanity. That type of arguments sounds very familiar… was there not a famous economist who argued something quite similar? Yes, there was Dr. Padilla. His name was: Reverend Thomas Malthus. Malthus, famous for writing "An Essay on the Principle of Population" (1798), also argued that overpopulation will result in the depletion of natural resources and massive starvation. Today, 200 years later, the world population is about 6.6 billion people and natural resources are yet to be depleted and the massive starvation predicted by Malthus has not happened, at least not as a result of population growth. The reason why Malthus failed in his predictions is that he underestimated the importance of technology and the ability of human beings to find substitutes. Moreover, Malthus forgot that individual’s needs and wants also change over time so some resources are no longer needed when individuals satisfy their needs for them and they move on to new needs. Of course, despite Malthus being wrong, his thesis still inspires many followers. There is not a day without some doomsayer claiming that we are killing Mother Earth, depleting natural resources, overfishing, overhunting, overproducing, overconsuming, overdriving, overbreathing, overeating, overdrinking, etc. And, of course, we are still awaiting to see those Nostradamuses of the world acknowledging that they are wrong…which is never going to happen because, according to them, they just misestimating their predictions by a few years, decades, centuries….millennia?

Ben Powell did accurately replied to former Governor Richard Lamm’s arguments on resource depletion resulting of overpopulation by mentioning in addition of what I have said above the famous bet that took place between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich in the 1980s. Julian Simon bet that the price of a basket of 5 metals will fall between 1980 and 1990. Guess what? He won and Paul Ehrlich in October 1990 mailed a check to Julian Simon for an amount of $576.07.

If I had to make a bet between who was more convincing between Ben Powell and former Governor Richard Lamm, I would have to bet Ben Powell…Sorry Dick…but I still do not understand how you succeeded to be elected Governor? …Hmmm, maybe Bryan Caplan is right after all about The Myth of the Rational Voter…or is it because we economists are so smart?